Rebuild World – Chapter 17, The Unlucky People

Akira finished packing his stuff in the inn. He was about to head to the wasteland when he saw Sheryl waiting for him outside.

“Akira, good morning.”

“Morning, why are you here this early? I’m going to the ruins after this, so make it short.”

“Ah, yes.”

Sheryl was actually trying to make a friendly smile towards Akira, but his reaction was very cold and her smile did not have any effect on him. Akira was a hard nut to crack, that was what she thought as she was dumbfounded by his reaction. But she immediately regained her composure and proceeded with explaining about her business with him. It was about the current condition of the gang’s territory, the location of the base and how to get in contact with him. And also, Sheryl wanted to introduce the new members of the gang to Akira. She asked him to come to the base tonight. After she finished explaining everything, she casually made a gesture showing that she really wanted him to come. At the same time, she was trying to butter up with him.

“Ah, and also, if possible, can you come to the base from time to time? It’s okay even if you come only when you have some spare time.”

“Even if you ask me to come only during my spare time, I’m so poor that I can’t afford to have any free time.”

Sheryl’s smile faded as she understood that Akira was not joking when he said that.

To be honest, Akira actually did not want to lose his already scarce free time by adding an extra schedule to go to the base regularly. Not to mention that he was working as a Hunter which meant no one knew what would happen to him on the next day, as such, it was fully possible that he would end up breaking his promise. Thus he did not want to make any promise that he might not be able to keep right from the start. Although he did not realize it himself, he was very concerned about keeping his promise.

But Sheryl could not read his reason, so she bowed and begged in panic.

“C-can you please spare your time somehow?”

Akira refused her request, although she did not give any detailed time and date as to when Akira had to visit the base. Sheryl would be in big trouble if the people of the slum thought that Akira abandoned her and she would be in great danger if Akira would not come to the base at all. As such, Sheryl understood that his absence might cause a big problem for her gang in the future. She had to do something about it. She gathered all of her experience to make her best expression for begging him.

But even so, Akira’s reaction was very cold. He even tried to cut their conversation short as if he was annoyed.

“…I’ll talk to you about that later. Well, I might pay a visit tonight if I have the time, then we can continue this conversation.”

Sheryl was relieved since she at least got Akira’s word for tonight’s visit. So she ended their conversation in order not to annoy Akira.

“I-I understand. Let’s talk about the details later in the base tonight. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes… Ah, by the way, I found a pile of corpses in front of my base though.”

“Corpses? It’s a common thing in the slum city anyway.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean it that way, the corpses were quite a lot so I thought that the area is pretty dangerous right now. I’m sure you’ll be fine, but just to be safe, please be careful when you come tonight.”

“I see, alright then. See you later.”

“Please be careful out there.”

Sheryl saw Akira off with a friendly smile. But once Akira’s figure was gone from her views, her expression immediately changed to puzzlement.

[…I asked Akira since I thought that he was the one who did it but… Did I make a wrong guess? But, it also felt like he was lying to me. So was it really him? But I don’t think he has any reason to hide it from me if he was the one who killed those people who tried to attack me… And if that was really what happened, he should have come to tell me to let me know that I owe him a favour. I really don’t understand… Well, those might also be people who got killed in some random fight.]

Sheryl then looked at the pendant that she was wearing, it was something that she got from Akira.

[…As I thought, this is a cheap pendant. Although I got the feeling that Akira liked this pendant, but I guess it’s really too cheap. Maybe I should’ve asked for something more expensive yesterday even if it meant that I had to help in paying too, huh?]

Although she already received Akira’s words that he would help her, it seemed that there were still a lot of difficulties in stock for her in the future. Sheryl walked back home while thinking about what she should do next.

***

Akira was continuing his shooting practice using images of monsters produced in his vision support.

His target changed from monsters that were standing still to monsters that were roaming around. Moreover, these monsters would attack if they noticed him. They would shoot at him using the guns growing on their backs and ran towards him trying to eat him. This training was for him to practice being level headed and calm even during such a situation.

With his current ability, it was actually a very difficult task for Akira to accurately aim at those monsters’ weak points even though he was allowed to calmly take his aims. In the end, Akira could not shoot those monsters accurately most of the time and ended up getting killed from the monster’s counter-attack. As such, the images of him getting killed kept piling around him.

Some of the corpses had Akira’s upper half or lower half completely disintegrated. Some of them were the remains of Akira’s minced body after being showered by hundreds of bullets. The images of him getting killed in all kinds of gory manners kept piling up.

Akira looked at the pile of corpses and mumbled with a bewildered face.

“Although this is just training and these are fakes, I just can’t get used to seeing my own corpses like this.”

Alpha then replied with a serious face.

“It’ll be troubling if you get used to this. Just because this is a training, don’t take this lightly and do this seriously so the same thing won’t happen to you during a real fight.”

“Yeah, I know. But that aside, there’re a lot of those monsters in the eastern district and most of the Hunters can kill those monsters while humming, right? Ah, but that level of ability is normal for Hunters, huh? I was actually happy after registering myself as a Hunter but I wonder how long it will take for me to have the ability of a real Hunter.”

Akira’s training continued and it was clear that his ability was growing. But it was also clear that his current ability was still far away from his goal.

Even if the goal was so far away, there were people who thought they would reach their goal as long as they did not stop training. But half of these people gave up midway thinking that the goal was too far off or just simply because of the frustration of not reaching it. It would be troublesome for Alpha if Akira also stopped because of the frustration. As such, Alpha smiled to cheer him up and change the mood.

“There is also the differences from the equipment that you use, so there’s no need to be so pessimistic. If you can earn enough money and buy good equipment, they’ll help you a lot, you know?”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. If I have to give you an example, Sara and Elena whom we met the other day can defeat those monsters that you just fought even if there were dozens of them. Although, I’m not sure if they can do that while humming though.”

Akira was shocked. Although he received Alpha’s support, he never thought that those people who would have died if he did not save them would actually be very capable.

“Those two are that strong, huh? So why were they losing that time.”

The wrong perception of their skill showed Akira’s lack of experience and how bad he thought his ability was. Alpha understood that but she replied back while trying to avoid the subject.

“There are differences in fighting monsters and fighting people. There’s also the effect from the colourless mist too. But if I have to say, it was mainly because of their bad luck. But again, since they were following your footprints, I wonder if they got caught in some of your bad luck.”

Alpha said that while joking but Akira looked a bit disturbed by that.

“…Can you please stop saying that?”

“Oh my, my apologies.”

Alpha apologized while smiling as Akira was back doing his shooting training without saying anything. He too thought that they were really affected by his bad luck, but he hid this thought behind his silence. He also put more focus on his training in order to hide the fact. As such, he ended up forgetting his goal that he was still far away from.

Looking at that, Alpha smiled with satisfaction.

***

After finishing his shooting training, Akira headed to the ruins to search for relics as well as for his ruin exploration training. First of all, he pulled out his binoculars and watched his surroundings as usual. If there was no problem, he would start moving into the ruin cautiously.

But something unexpected happened. As Akira confirmed the safety and picked a route to explore the ruin, Alpha who usually would not disturb his training said to Akira.

“Akira, connect your binocular to your information terminal.”

“Hm? Okay.”

Akira pulled out a cable from his binocular and connected it to his information terminal like he was told. Alpha then started operating the binocular through the terminal. The image zoomed in and zoomed out rapidly as the lens moved rapidly up-down left-right. Since Alpha could only move the lens, Akira had to help Alpha moved the rest while following Alpha’s instructions.

The image from the binocular rapidly changed from one to another, Akira did not understand what Alpha was actually looking for. Alpha properly confirmed all the images that the binocular captured. She then suddenly shouted to Akira with a grim look.

“Akira! Get into the ruin! Quickly!”

It would be fatal to ask for the reason, Akira understood by experiencing it firsthand and Alpha already warned him about that before. So Akira immediately started running.

“What did you find?”

Originally, they would not be able to talk while running since it would mess up with his breathing. But thanks to the telepathic communication, they were able to have a conversation while running too.

“There’s a trailer inside the ruin that’s being attacked by monsters.”

“Wait for a second. So why are we running to the ruin instead? Shouldn’t we avoid it instead?”

“Akira, you can ask all you want but don’t stop running. There’re a lot of monsters there. The people inside the trailer are fighting back, but it’s only a matter of time before they get killed.”

Akira was puzzled, but he did not slow down at all, or else his life would be at risk too.

“What I’m saying here is that shouldn’t I be running in the opposite direction? I don’t have the duty to risk my life in order to help people whom I don’t even know, you know?”

Although it was out of his own reason, Akira had helped Elena and Sara in the past although he did not know them at that time. But Akira completely ignored that fact and Alpha would have pointed that out normally, but she also ignored it this time.

“Of course your safety is the top priority, so I’m picking the safest route.”

“Wait a sec, so how in the world it ended up with me having to run toward those monsters?”

That question was very logical, but Alpha replied back with a tone that showed how bad their situation was.

“Unfortunately, the monsters already encircled you. Even if you start running back to the city now, they’ll eventually catch up and kill you. If you try fighting against those monsters in the wasteland where there’s no hiding place for you, your chance of winning is basically zero. Those monsters might be focused on those people in the trailer right now, but once they’re done with them, it’ll be your turn next.”

Akira’s face twitched as he was making a grim face.

“So if I don’t meet up with them and help them fight back before they get killed, then we’re all goners, huh?”

“Yep, that’s it. And in the worst-case scenario where you’re the only one still alive, you’ll have to go to the deeper part of the ruin. I can give you better support when you’re in the deeper part of the Kuzusuhara City ruins and it’ll give you a better chance to survive. But that’ll be our next plan if our plan to meet up with the people in the trailer fails. After all, you have a better survival chance if you meet up and fight together with them. So that’s why you need to hurry up, if you’re too late, you’ll be fighting all of those monsters alone.”

“You guys in the trailer! Give your best until I’m there! Goddammit!! Is this because of my bad luck too? Because I used all of my luck?!”

“I don’t know who’s bad luck it is. I would say that those people in the trailer are helping to shoulder some of your bad luck… As I thought, Akira, you used your lifetime worth of luck when you met me. Well, I’ll give you my utmost support in exchange though. So you do your best too, okay?”

Alpha smiled bitterly and her serious face relaxed a bit.

As Akira saw that, he more or less was able to understand his current condition. He was making a bewildered face after hearing that cheering from Alpha as he kept running as fast as he could in order to survive.

***

A trailer was heading to the Kuzusuhara ruin through the eastern wasteland when Akira was in his shooting training. It was a trailer made to traverse the harsh environment of the wasteland and designed for a long journey. It was even equipped with a machine gun on its roof.

There were 2 men in the trailer, Katsuragi and Darris. Katsuragi was a weapon dealer who frequently sold his goods to Hunters. He had been working as a merchant using this trailer which also functioned as a moving shop for years. As for Darris, he’s the main fighting power of the duo. He worked as a shopkeeper helping Katsuragi as well as his bodyguard.

If you go further east from the region ruled by the Corporate Government, there was a vast unexplored wasteland. Monsters as huge as mountains roamed freely inside that unexplored wasteland. Because of the harsh condition in that region, the Eastern Government could not explore the area even after exerting all of its power. The region was simply that dangerous. But ruins with advanced technology, enough to even produce those monsters, were located in that region. It was a region filled with knowledge and treasures from the old world that was worth exploring despite all the dangers.

The border that separated the territory owned by the Corporate Government from the dangerous unexplored wasteland was known as the Front Line. The Corporate Government kept pouring a huge amount of money to Front Line in order to get a piece of some treasure and knowledge of the old world.

Of course, only high-level Hunters were there and to work there was the highest point in the Hunter profession. Powerful Hunters were living in that place, some of them formed groups that would even scare big corporations while some of them were lone wolves who could pick a fight against the government all by themselves.

Katsuragi and Darris were on their way back to the Kugamayama city from the Front Line. Of course, the road from the front line was very dangerous, thus a huge amount of money was offered to transport goods. Normally, goods transported by big companies would be accompanied by a lot of bodyguards. The people who did not care about the danger and risked their lives in transporting the goods by themselves could get a lot of money.

Of course, they would only do that if they already had a patron who would buy their goods. The equipment used in the front line were of course of the highest quality suitable for the dangers there. Hunters who only operated around the Kugamayama city could not afford this equipment and few of this equipment were just simply too powerful for the Hunters here. As such, this equipment just would not sell around Kugamayama city.

Being a talented merchant that he was, Katsuragi was somehow able to get a deal. Thus he used his own personal trailer, filled it with high-quality goods and started transporting goods through a long journey from the Front Line. They only needed to go a little further before they reached Kugamayama city, thus their bet was on the verge of succeeding.

But right now, they were driving as fast as they could, trying to escape from the danger that was approaching them from behind. So they prioritized driving fast rather than driving safely. Thus the car was shaking violently.

Darris shouted to Katsuragi.

“Katsuragi!! This is why I keep telling you to get yourself a better escort!!”

Katsuragi shouted back at Darris.

“Just shut it!!! We didn’t get ourselves a good escort because we don’t have enough money!! You too know that, don’t you?! Not to mention that it was your fault for changing our route out of the blue, that’s why we’re in this situation!!”

“You shut up!! The contract for the bodyguard was too short!! If I stayed on the original route, we wouldn’t be able to arrive on time, you know!! If only you had more money, we could’ve taken a better route than this one!!”

“So it’s money, huh!! As I thought, it’s money’s fault, huh!!”

“Yeah, it’s money!! This world runs on money after all!!”

Katsuragi laughed loudly from the driver’s seat, laughing at their own hopeless situation.

The reason why Katsuragi and Darris were feeling hopeless was because of the monsters following their trailer. Those monsters were chasing them with their powerful vigour while letting out howls that reverberated through the air and stomps that shook the earth.

They already used the machine gun on the top roof of the trailer to shoot at those monsters until it ran out of bullets. Although it turned countless monsters into minced meat, it was eventually futile. Those monsters did not even care about their companions’ corpses as they ran over them while chasing Katsuragi and Darris. Not to mention that other monsters along the way joined them on their chase. Thus, the monsters count was snowballing.

The Hunters whom Katsuragi and Darris employed to escort their trailer had already abandoned them when they saw that the number of monsters chasing them were much larger than they could engage.

From the perspective of the escorts, it was because Katsuragi took a route outside of what was decided in their contract, they met those monsters. So, their current situation was a consequence of the employer not upholding the contract, thus the escorts had a good reason to abandon them.

Half of the monsters even detached from the main group and started chasing the escorts. As such, it can be said that their escorts had done their job. And it could even be said that Katsuragi and Darris should even be thankful for their escorts, but it was a different story whether they actually felt thankful or not.

Katsuragi’s and Darris’ laughs slowly died down. They were fully pumped with adrenaline because of the danger that they were facing. But the effect of adrenaline faded away with their laughs.

Darris, who already regained his composure kept telling himself to calm down while making a serious face. After forcing himself to calm down, he recognized how dire their condition was and let out a sigh.

If they were thinking of running away from the monsters by heading to the city and ended up bringing those monsters with them, then the city would definitely use its firepower to kill the monsters together with them. That would be more or less guaranteed to kill them, and even in the unlikely case if they survived that, the city would arrest them for disturbing the safety and have them reimburse the repair from the damage and the resource that it used for the defense. Even with all the money and wealth that they had now, they would not be able to pay the fine. Thus the city would make them pay the fine by working them hard, it would be much worse that they would wish they had died.

But even after knowing that, there were people in similar situations who drove straight for the city looking for a slim chance in surviving. Most of the monster attacks on the slum city that Akira had gone through were because of this.

“Katsuragi, I know that much. I was asking why are we heading to Kuzusuhara ruins?”

“The ruin is the territory of other monsters, those monsters that are chasing us know that too. So they might stop chasing us if we get deep into the ruins. Not to mention that place is very dangerous, so we might even be able to meet a strong Hunter who can clean up all of those monsters in one go. You’ve sent the SOS, right?”

“Yeah, I hope someone accepts our SOS request…”

Normally, any request submitted in the Hunter Office would be checked and evaluated first, thus it would take some time before it would get accepted. But in the case of an SOS request, it would be processed as fast as possible and immediately broadcasted. SOS request was frequently used by Hunters who found themselves in a pinch in the middle of the wasteland.

Since the one requesting the SOS would the person in danger himself, the reward would also be relatively big. As such, many Hunters would take such high reward low-risk request. Even if the requester lied about the reward out of desperation, the Hunter Guild would still give a suitable amount as a reward in their place. Thus the Hunters did not need to worry about anything. As such, it was better for them to send SOS rather than making a random wireless broadcast.

Katsuragi clicked his tongue while still making a serious face.

“Well, there’s no chance we can go to the city, so the ruin is the place with the best survival chance for us. We can only leave everything to luck after that, let’s go!!”

After that, Katsuragi and Darris just dove into the ruin. They chose a route that was wide enough for the trailer to pass through as they kept moving deeper into the run. They did not have the detailed map of the inner part of the ruins, the map that they randomly acquired from their network had a lot of mistakes, thus it was fully up to their luck as to how far they could keep running away.

Unfortunately, Katsuragi bumped into a wreckage that threw their trailer into a small alley, thus they had no other choice but to stop their trailer. But it did not end there, the monsters chasing them ignored the fact that they were entering other monster’s territory and kept running towards Katsuragi and Darris.

Darris made his decision and shouted.

“Katsuragi!! We’ll shoot them back!! Quickly load the machine gun with new ammo! Once you’re done, get back to your driver seat and give me support with the machine gun! Given our situation, you wouldn’t complain about the money that we would spend for the ammo, right?!”

“I know! Be careful out there!”

Darris then jumped off the trailer and readied his gun as Katsuragi started loading ammo as fast as he could.

***

Akira was already deep into the ruin for him to be able to directly see the monsters. Some of the monsters noticed him and changed their target from Katsuragi and Darris to Akira.

Akira kept running while holding his AAH rifle. He was making a grim face.

“Alpha, they noticed me! Are you sure it’s okay if I keep going like this?”

Akira looked at Alpha with a very worried look, but Alpha did not change her command.

“It’s okay! Just keep running! I’ll guide you!! And also, take the medicine while you still have the chance!”

“Am I going to get injured again in this fight!?”

“That medicine can also relieve your fatigue!! Just keep this in your mind, we won’t get any rest from now on! You just need to follow my orders and shoot just like you practised and it’ll be alright!”

“I got killed so many times during the practice though!?”

“Remember the times when you didn’t get killed, you just need to do it like those times!! Hurry up! They’re coming!”

Akira took some medicines while running. He kept his eyes on the monsters in front of him as he swallowed the medicine. He made his resolve to face the upcoming fight for which he even needed to take the medicine beforehand.

He followed Alpha’s order as he stopped and took aim with his gun. His vision was further augmented for battle by Alpha’s support. It showed the priority order to kill the monsters that were heading their way and it put on markers on their weak points. It also put TP line from the muzzle of Akira’s gun.

Akira took aim on the monster with the highest kill priority and lined the TP line to its weak point before pulling the trigger.

A gunshot echoed through the wasteland. The bullet flew from Akira’s gun and hit its target right on. Although it did not hit its weak point, the anti-monster bullet was able to tear off its meat, crush its bones and caused enough injuries in its inner organs that made it a fatal wound. Those monsters that got hit on their legs were significantly slowed down while those that got hit right on their weak points just rolled dead on the ground.

The bulls-eye target on Akira’s vision changed into a line and Akira followed that line with his gun as he held its trigger. The bullets that spewed out from its muzzle showered the monsters and those monsters fell down into the ground one by one. Some of the monsters were shocked and stopped moving.

Akira used this chance to run to his next shooting position following the route given by Alpha and started shooting again after he reached that position.

Alpha kept dashing out unusually strict orders. She considered everything inside those orders like the movement range of the monsters and Akira’s amateur manoeuvrability. She tailored her order for maximum efficiency.

Akira tried as hard as he could to follow those orders. As such, from other points of view, it seemed as if Akira was performing above his original ability. He himself was surprised at how he was performing. As he kept fighting through the monsters, he finally arrived in the deeper part of the ruin, but then he thought.

“Alpha, can I ask you a question?”

“This is a good time, so go on.”

“About those monsters that I shot just before, although I remember fighting some of those monsters during my training, aren’t they way too weak?”

“Nope, that’s just how powerful they are.”

“…If that’s true, then why did I get killed a lot of times during the training against those monsters?”

“It’s because monsters in your training don’t get surprised, shocked, confused or try to escape. I set them so they would chase and target you like a machine as long as they can. If I make the monsters in the training so easy to defeat, it might make you less careful when fighting those monsters for real, right? So I did that just to be safe. But thanks to that, you can fight without dying and perform really well just like now. So the training was really useful, wasn’t it?”

Alpha said that while smiling confidently.

“Well, you do have a point.”

He was in the middle of a battle and the training was useful, that was what Akira told himself as he changed gear and rushed forward.

***

Katsuragi and Darris tried their hardest to fight back. Their trailer was already surrounded by heaps of monsters’ corpses. Blood was pouring out from the corpses that were half destroyed after getting showered in the bullets from their machine gun. The corpses were piling up like a hill and made a pool of blood and soaked the area around it in red.

They had to finish their fight before the pool of blood attracted more monsters, if that happened, they would be attacked by monsters from the ruins and the wasteland.

They had killed so many monsters, that they started to hope that those monsters would start running away. But those monsters did not even bat an eyelash on the piled-up dead corpses of their kin as they kept charging forward as if to laugh over Katsuragi and Darris’s wish. They trampled on the meat of their dead kin and turned the ground into bloody mush as they were running toward Katsuragi and Darris.

Katsuragi used his machine gun to kill any monster that approached the trailer while Darris kept shooting at those monsters aiming to immobilize them. If they stopped even only for a moment, they would join the corpses littered around. As such, they were fighting as hard as they could to survive.

In case of firepower, Katsuragi and Darris definitely had the upper hand. It was obvious from the corpses that kept piling up around them. But even so, it looked like the end was nowhere near. Katsuragi and Darris’ faces started to turn pale.

Katsuragi screamed as he cursed the monsters that kept coming at them.

“Dammit!! There’s no end to them! Even if they eat us, they would not even get a sausage worth of meat for each one of them, you know!! So why the heck don’t they just go eat those piles of meat on the ground!! There are just mountains of meat sitting there, aren’t there? Darris! I ran out of ammo! Can you handle them for a while until I finish reloading?!”

Darris made a grim face. If the machine gun stopped shooting even for a second, they would definitely get swarmed in no time. But he could not say to Katsuragi that it was an impossible request. After all, there was nothing he could do if he lost the support from the machine gun. So Darris shouted back.

“…Make it quick!”

The machine gun stopped for a moment, the monsters that were held back by the machine gun immediately rushed in. As Darris was looking at the number of monsters charging towards him, the rational part of him telling him that it was futile and there was no way he could handle them all alone.

Darris had already given up all hope. But the next moment, the monster that should have delivered him his death rolled over and stopped moving, a bullet had torn through its forehead. Then its corpse became an obstacle to the monsters behind it, as such, the other monsters stopped for a moment. But during that small opening, those monsters were showered by countless bullets and fell limp to the ground.

Darris then snapped back to reality, he started shooting back while looking at the source of that gunshot. There he saw Akira shooting from a window of a building near them.

The tide of the battle changed towards Katsuragi as Akira was providing them with support. Normally, it was not a situation where a single AAH could change the tide of the battle, but as Akira kept targeting those monsters while following Alpha’s instruction, he was able to buy enough time for Katsuragi to finish reloading. Since Alpha kept dashing out orders that maximize his efficiency and with Akira strictly following it, his overall shooting efficiency was greatly increased.

Akira’s face twitched when he saw the monsters corpses that already piled up in that area, but even so, he himself kept shooting and adding more corpses to that pile of dead monsters.

“That’s just fricking lot of monsters, was I about to get attacked by those monsters back then?”

Alpha smiled as she gave a confirmation and proceeded with giving Akira a warning.

“The possibility of that is still not zero, you know. So you can’t stop providing them with your support.”

“There’s no need to tell me. No way in hell I would let myself be attacked by those monsters.”

Akira squeezed everything that he learned from his training. He put everything he had for providing support while thinking that it would be fatal if he let go even a single monster.

It did not take long before Katsuragi noticed Akira’s help. He mumbled while smiling as he was preparing his machine gun.

“…So the SOS request is already broadcasted, huh? Alright. The future looks bright, we just need to keep at it a bit longer.”

With the machine gun back up, their overwhelming firepower returned. And with the help from Darris and Akira, they laid waste on those monsters. Then after 2 more machine gun reloads, they finally eradicated all the monsters in that area.

After they finished, Darris and Katsuragi were so surprised as they came to know that it was a small boy who was helping them, but even so, they did not belittle him at all. After all, they witnessed Akira’s ability just a few moments ago.

Katsuragi smiled in relief and opened up a conversation with a friendly tone.

“Thanks for the help, are you a Hunter who accepted our SOS request?”

Akira looked puzzled as he answered back.

“SOS request? Nope, I was actually about to get attacked and was running away from those monsters.”

“Is that so? It seems that both of us are not blessed by lady luck today.”

Katsuragi did not say anything about the fact that they were actually the ones who brought that monsters. It was because Akira did not ask them about that. After all, it felt like they involved Akira in their bad luck.

Katsuragi then smiled to relieve the awkwardness between them.

“I’m Katsuragi and that guy over there is Darris. We’re merchants and this trailer doubles as our moving shop. We’re actually in the middle of our way returning to Kugamayama City.”

“I’m Akira, a Hunter, I was just passing through the area by chance.”

“Oh! A Hunter! Then you’re a customer. This must be some kind of fate. Since you saved us, I’ll give you a big discount if you want to buy anything, you know? Darris! At least say your thanks to our saviour.”

Darris, who was doing maintenance on his gun not too far, shouted back.

“I know! I know! I’m Darris! Thanks for the help you provided!”

“Once we’re done doing maintenance on our guns, we’ll be heading back to Kugamayama City. Want to come with us? Since we just faced such a scale of monster attack, you’re not thinking of continuing your ruin exploration, right?”

Akira also thought that he had enough for a day, so he was not thinking of going back to training now.

“Alpha, it’s okay if we go back today, right? No, we’ll go back, I take no objection.”

Looking at how desperate Akira was, Alpha smiled as if she was enjoying.

“Sure, let’s go back for today.”

Although he knew that Alpha would approve it, he still felt relieved after hearing that.

“Yes please.”

“Oh!! He said yes!”

Katsuragi let out a big laugh and let Akira get on the trailer. He then helped Darris in finishing maintenance of the gun and then happily started driving the trailer. Although there were a lot of monster corpses in front of them, it was not a problem to the engine power of a trailer specially made for traversing the wasteland. Looking at how the trailer was crushing the corpses below it, Akira looked a bit perturbed. But Katsuragi just ignored it, or more like, it seemed that he was enjoying crushing monster corpses with his trailer.

Silavin: Hmm… Chance for Akira to get a weapon upgrade?

The Bad Luck thing seems to get getting to Akira. I wonder how it will affect his psyche down the line.